Function over Form, or Why I Really Ought to Learn to Take My Time Sewing

A superhero cape I made for my toddler. 

As many of you know, I prefer to live life on the cheaper side. If it's possible to fill a need or make something work better by using what we already have rather than purchasing something, I try to do that. We don't have a ton of wiggle room in our budget, and besides, it means I don't have to venture out to the store with a couple kids in tow. 

The downside of this lifestyle is it makes me the twenty-something version of the stereotypical old grandmother on the farm who'd rather piece together curtains out of old flour sacks and wear a 20 year old  hideously out of style coat with "plenty of wear left in it" then spend any money. 

THEY'RE STILL PERFECTLY GOOD RON!! I mean, c'mon, I don't even see any patches. 

When it comes to my sewing, this becomes especially evident.

A couple years ago, I received a sewing machine and some sewing notions, thread, etc, for my birthday. A couple weeks later, I found a bolt of light green cotton fabric for $10 at a thrift store.

Now, I learned some very basic sewing skills as a kid. I did a brief stint in 4-H, and my mom enjoyed sewing occasionally as a hobby, so she taught me the basic mechanics of how to work a machine and sew a seam. And the instruction book that came with this particular machine was mercifully easy to understand.

Unfortunately, knowledge has not managed to transfer over into any great amount of aesthetic talent.

Take this grocery sack dispenser, for instance.

I made it from a leg from an old pair of jeans and a scrap of ornamental ribbon I hadn't found another use for. I sewed the far end of the leg shut, sewed on the ribbon, cut a couple slits in what used to be the bottom hem, and used a thin scrap of ribbon as a drawstring. The whole thing took me about five minutes.  Not pretty, but functional.

Or this chair cover I made for our recliner. We bought it for $5 from a yard sale, so it's not too surprising that the top layer of the pleather was beginning to flake off and get thin. I took some jean material and some of the fabric from the bolt I had and stitched this up.

Hopefully it gets us some more use out of the chair- at least now we can use it without little plastic flakes getting caught in our hair. Just ignore the big dark blue square where the pocket used to be.

And finally, this quilt I repaired by adding a new top layer made out of old and scavenged t-shirts.

The old top layer had worn thin, the stitching was coming apart, and the batting had worn thin where the top layer had started to come apart, but the bottom layer was still good. I cut off the old edge of the quilt (it had this weird scalloped edge that would have been impossible to work with), added the new top layer, and then used that green fabric for edging. The result wouldn't win any prizes at a quilt show, but it covers our king sized bed, and is much sturdier than the original quilt.

In all these instances, what I made isn't very pretty. But it gets the job done. Hopefully as I get more practice I'll also gain the skill necessary to make my creations nice to look at as well as functional.

 In the meantime though, this works. Now, where'd I put those flour sacks?